'Slumdog Millionaire' Brings Bollywood to the Oscars : Rolling Stone

Beating out superstars like Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Jack White and Alicia Keys, the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack picked up three Oscar nominations — one for Best Score and two in the Best Song category. The Bollywood showstopper "Jai Ho" (which plays over the closing credits during an elaborate dance number) and "O...Saya," a tribal-techno cut featuring a verse from Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A., both got nods from the Academy. And the soundtrack has become an unlikely hit album — it topped the iTunes chart in January and has sold over 100,000 copies.

The mastermind behind Slumdog's kaleidoscopic mix of classic Hindi pop, playful rap, techno bump and New Age balladry is A.R. Rahman, 43, Bollywood's most important modern composer. "When I was working on the film in India, I began listening to his stuff and thought it was extraordinary," says director Danny Boyle. "They call him the Mozart of Madras." Rahman has scored more than 100 films and sold over 100 million albums, and is a global pop star. "My mom always had [his] songs on, and he did the soundtracks to all these movies in the Nineties," says M.I.A., whose "Paper Planes" appears on the album. "It was part of my upbringing." (The rapper also made Slumdog the first release on her N.E.E.T. label.)

A piano prodigy, Rahman studied Western and Indian classical music, toured with tabla master Zakir Hussain, wrote ad jingles, and absorbed jazz, country and classic rock. "I grew up very multiculti," says Rahman, "watching Hollywood movies, listening to Chinese and African music. My very first film soundtrack used a Japanese taiko drum." "Jai Ho," for instance, isn't too far removed from Top 40 pop, right down to the T-Pain-style Auto-Tune vocals.

If Slumdog wins and M.I.A. is called onto the stage on Oscar night, she plans to use the platform to draw attention to the civil war in her native Sri Lanka. "If I can use that Oscar to make people pay attention to what's happening," she says, "that'd be a great thing."

[Issue 1072 — February 19. 2009]

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